There’s got to be more to this story than meets the eye, IMO. An 80+ year-old long-time homeowner DOES NOT typically refi their home over and over. Either the son (later added to the title) put his mom up to this or both the mom and son were so ignorant that they fell prey to crooked loan brokers who may have even solicited them door-to-door.

The mom may have not been fully aware she was to be evicted soon and her son couldn’t/didn’t tell her. This may have been a “murder-suicide.”

I can’t see the 80+ year old doing anything with the $173K that was extracted from the property. Maybe the son was a gambling addict and borrowed it to pay off his gambling debt??

It sounds a lot like “elder-abuse” going on here.

If the new buyers of the trustees deed had insurance, they can probably eventually collect on that policy because the fire was through no fault of their own (arson).

Sad story . . . it’s very possible here that the house may have at one time been paid off.